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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sure losing an hour of sleep to Daylight Savings Time this weekend bites the big one but the immediate pay off is an extra hour of light when we get home. Tonight we cooked outside on the deck. The Sun filled the sky with pinks and purples while the bradford pear trees competed by saturating the air with their rich fragrance (ummmm and pollen).

I made grilled/roasted pork chops with Fire Roasted Parmesan Asparagus on the Big Green Egg.

For the chops, I simply rubbed some boneless chops that I had cut from a whole pork tenderloin with Billy Bones Competition Rub with a bit of his XXX Cherry Rub and let them sit for about 30 minutes. I seared them for about 90 seconds a side at 500f at direct heat and then put them on indirect at 400f (plate setter legs up) until they hit 145f.

For the asparagus, I used this recipe just modified as noted for cooking on the Egg.

INGREDIENTS2 1/2 pounds fresh asparagus (about 30 large)2 tablespoon olive oil1/2 teaspoon kosher salt1/4 teaspoon black pepper - freshly ground1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese - freshly grated1 large Lemon cut in wedges for servingINSTRUCTIONSPreheat the oven to 400 degrees F. If the stalks of the asparagus are thick, peel the bottom 1/2 of each. Lay them in a single layer on a sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes, until tender. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and return to the oven for another minute. Serve with lemon wedges

Tonight, we added some red pepper flakes to the asparagus at the beginning. We made a small rectangular pan out of foil to fit one half of the cooking surface on the BGE. Great flavor, the red pepper seemed to infuse into the oil. We loved it!

What's that? Yeah, we didn't have lemon wedges but if you look close, we did have lemons on the olive oil bottle;)

This looks delicious, it's making me hungry right now. I really like your improvised roasting pan for the Egg. We'll often use the semi-disposeable roasting pans from Costco - they can be re-used ad infinitum, but they're marketed as "disposeable" -

And I am SO jealous that your deck is already useable this time of year. We used our Egg to make chicken for 100 last weekend and had to dig a path!